Working from home a health and safety approach

In an effort to provide Directors with relevant support and guidance, the IoD has partnered with the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) to produce a series of factsheets and guides aimed at helping businesses embrace home-working.

Crucial to any organisation’s success is a thriving and positive workforce and the IoD continues to ensure that mental health at work features high on the agenda for business through our Inclusive Business campaign and dedicated content hub.

The Mental Health and Wellbeing While Working From Home toolkit contains helpful suggestions for keeping mentally well in your work environment that are easy to implement and share with your team.

For significant numbers of businesses in the UK, the impact of Covid-19 has changed the way organisations go to work. Advances in technology have allowed a greater number of people to work away from the office, forcing an increasing number of employers to create more flexible working environments and find ways of managing workers remotely. However, working from home or in other remote environments away from the office can raise a range of concerns around the safety, health and wellbeing of employees.

This Managing Remote Workers guide provides information when considering how to manage remote workers during the pandemic – or extended period of flexible working – and how to mitigate risks.

While some of the challenges faced by Directors and their employees are about getting the mental health framework right and thinking differently in their approach to ‘being at work’, other significant considerations are purely physical, and it is important not to overlook these.

Addressing this, the Working from Home Ergonomics factsheet demonstrates some key areas to keep in mind when establishing a workstation outside of the conventional office environment.